Past Happenings
CHRISTINE KOSIBA - 2-DAY WORKSHOP
OCTOBER 7th & 8th // NOVEMBER 11th & 12th 2023
ABOUT CHRISTINE:
Chris&ne Kosiba is a full time ceramic and mixed media artist residing in Brevard, NC. Christine earned her BA and MA in Education and taught in the public school system for twelve years before pursuing art full time. During that time, Christine worked with students with emotional and behavioral challenges and found clay to be a powerful tool in her classroom. Ceramic studies allowed her class a creative, healing and expressive outlet.
Christine carried on her love of teaching into her studio practice by teaching workshops and classes. Christine works intuitively, allowing the sculpture to develop organically from clay coils and slabs of clay. Sculptures are fired multiple times with layers of color applied in a painterly fashion to achieve surface depth and interest. Found objects may be incorporated if they enhance the narrative of the piece. Each piece has its own evolution and story which guides its ultimate form and finish.
Christine’s ceramic sculptures can be found in high end art fairs, exhibitions, gallery representation, private collections and publications. She is a member of the Piedmont Craftsmen Guild and Southern Highland Craft Guild.
Instagram @christinekosibasculpture
Giselle Hicks - 2-DAY DEMO
OCTOBER 1st & 2nd, 2022
ABOUT GISELLE:
Raised in a restaurant family in Southern California, I was drawn to ceramics as a teenager and aspired to be a potter while studying ceramics at Syracuse University and eventually Alfred University in New York State. I have spent the past 25 years making objects in clay - a material that tends to attract grounded, community-oriented people who are interested in history, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, physics, and eating. Potters love to eat. They are a convivial bunch.
Until recently, my career has been fairly nomadic. I have followed opportunities to participate in residencies, worked for a gallery, taught at universities, and managed the ceramics program at an art center. Given these varied experiences, I have realized that though my creative identity finds its center in the studio, it is essential that my work and knowledge move out into the classroom, marketplace, and community in order to evolve and thrive.
I feel fortunate to have found a material that has offered an unconventional life with innumerable opportunities to study, travel and teach around this country and the world. In 2018 I purchased a home and studio in Helena, Montana, a community I was introduced to as a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation. I continue to teach workshops and exhibit my work in galleries, in addition to working with interior design firms and retail shops to place work in hotels, restaurants, and homes.
Instagram @gisellehicks
JOSH COPUS - 2-DAY DEMO
OCTOBER 3rd & 4th, 2020
ABOUT JOSH:
Josh Copus was raised in a close-knit community of farmers and artisans in Floyd County, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia. The local traditions of crafts and agriculture, blended with the new ideas and outlook of the alternative community to form the basis of Josh’s life philosophy and instill an appreciation for art and nature that strongly influences his current work in ceramics.
During his youth in Floyd, Josh was introduced to ceramics through an opportunity to work in Tom Phelps’ pottery studio. Tom is the father of one of Josh’s childhood friends, and he offered both boys a medium for expression in a setting that was creative and unrestrictive. Tom served as a mentor to Josh during his transformative adolescence and planted the seed that has grown into Josh’s love for clay.
Since moving to North Carolina in 1998, Josh has continued to study ceramics at a variety of schools and through countless hours of working with potters in the Asheville area and throughout the nation. During this time, Josh has developed a personally significant approach to making pottery that values the importance of local materials through his studies of folk potteries throughout the world, focusing specifically on the ceramics traditions of the Korea, Japan, England, and North Carolina. By combining his experiences in the academic classroom with more traditional pottery teaching models, Josh’s work references historical forms and processes while remaining relevant to the contemporary art world of our age.
Since graduating from UNCA in the spring of 2007, Josh has continued his involvement in the Clay Space Co-op, a cooperative studio that he founded in the River Arts District of Asheville during 2003. In addition to his work at the Clay Space, Josh has begun establishing his own pottery on his land in Marshall, NC. Using funds provided by the Windgate Fellowship, he designed and built a 27ft long woodfired climbing chamber kiln in the summer of 2007. Since then, Josh has added two more large wood-burning kilns and is currently working on the construction of a studio adjacent to the kiln site.
When he is not building and making things, Josh spends most of his time on his land growing crops, swimming in rivers, operating a shovel, and constantly searching for interesting materials to build and make things with.
Instagram @joshcopuspottery
MELISSA WEISS - 2-DAY DEMO
OCTOBER 5th & 6th // October 12TH & 13TH, 2019
Melissa Weiss is originally from New York. She received her BFA in photography in 2000 from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Melissa currently resides in Asheville, NC where she runs a studio housing over 20 artists in an 8,000 SF warehouse called SouthSideStudios near the Swannanoa River. She is a full time studio potter and mom. Melissa makes functional high fired pots from clay that she digs on her land in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Melissa is a self-taught potter, yet has learned from many potters in the Asheville area. Melissa has attended John C. Campbell, Penland and Arrowmont as a studio assistant, a work study and a teacher for wood fire workshops. Melissa has spent the last 12 years learning how to fire wood and gas fueled kilns with local potters. Melissa makes all her own clay, glazes and slips and fires the min gas and wood fired reduction kilns to cone 10.
Instagram @melissaweisspottery/
KYLE CARPENTER - 2-DAY DEMO
OCTOBER 6TH & 7TH, 2018
“As a studio potter, I work diligently to make well-crafted wares for everyday people. It’s seemingly less about the “ritual of the table” and more about respecting a long tradition of craftsmen before me and discovering my own voice. As a contemporary potter, I often look to past traditions for inspiration. I’m interested in folk pottery of many origins… My native state of North Carolina, of course offers a deep well of talented potters, both folk and contemporary, to look towards for inspiration.
Simplicity in form offers a broad surface for me to embellish with lines, patterns, and drawings. Before I was introduced to the ceramic arts, I did a fair amount of illustration before and during art school. The combination of three-dimensional forms and two-dimensional drawings was a natural fusion of both my love of drawing and pottery, art and craft. It is my intention to bring together clear and abstract markings to engage the view to look closely at how design relates to the form of a pot.”
Instagram @kylecarpenterpottery
NANCY GREEN - 2 day demo
NOVEMBER 11th & 12th, 2017
“Although I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, as a child I spend every possible moment in the country exploring the woods and playing in creeks. The earthy tones to my functional pots reflect the nature that surrounded me as a child.
My aesthetic falls into a minimalist category, less is more for me. I am draw to and hope to create pots that have an organic and natural quality. These are the pots that pull me in. Their irregularities give these pots a personality not unlike our own physical presence. I juxtapose minimalism, simple clean lines, design that are unadorned but have a strong presence with aspects that are loose, organic and casual.
My stoneware pieces are treadle wheel thrown and then modified with hand built components. Surface treatments are applied slips and glazes, natural ash and/or soda. My work is fired in soda or wood kilns.
This 2 Day Demo Workshop focused on the endless possibilities of forms that can be made starting with a basic bottomless cylinder.”
Instagram @nancygreenceramics
Roving Room 2014
participating artists
Kendall Martin Babl / Rebecca Beachy / Annie Bielski / Jared Buckheister / Lucinda Bunnen / Elijah Burgher
Joe Brittain / Dawn Cerny / Daniel Gustav Cramer / Cameron Crawford / Chelsea Culp / Grace Davis
Taylor Davis / Sandra Erbacher / Ben Foch / Chase Folsom / Pamela Fraser / Cameron Gibson
Beka Goedde / Rodrigo Hernandez / Audrey Hynes / JDHD / Ann Greene Kelly / Julia Klein
Judy Lampert / Judith Leemann / Hailey lowe Fennell / Ashley Lyon / Ryan Mcfarland / Donna Mintz
Joseph Montgomery / Virginia Lee Montgomery / David Moré / Mathew Morris / Jessie Mott / Michael Murrell
Kate and Erin Jane Nelson / Hao Ni /Rachel Niffenegger / Meg T. Noe / Erin o’Brien / Virginia Overell
Virginia Overton / Amy Pleasant / Tobias Putrih / Jen Ra / Mike Rea / Steve Reinke /
Will Rogan / Michelle Rosenberg / Eric Ruschman / Carmelle Safdie / Olve Sande / Nancy Shaver
Geoffrey Todd Smith / Tiana Tucker / Allyson Vieira / Nicole Wilson